Nearly a year ago I highlighted a then-new scrapbooking service, Bite Sized Scrapbooking, as one of my Friday Favorites picks. Bite Sized Scrapbooking was a new concept in page inspiration that would deliver emails directly to your inbox every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, with each message leading up to the creation of a single scrapbook page by the end of the week. The service worked on the principle that any task is manageable (and less daunting) when broken down into tiny elements. I was thrilled when Kim at BSS contacted me and asked to use one of my layouts as inspiration last year since I'm a fan of anything that gets scrappers making pages!
Sadly, Bite Sized Scrapbooking ended its live email service earlier this year, but Bite Sized Scrapbooking "Bundles" including the contents of the original BSS emails are now available for purchase as instant downloads. Each bundle contains 26 weeks' worth of emails and inspiration pages, and Kim at BSS has sweetly offered to give a bundle (your choice of Bundle 1 or Bundle 2 (where you'll find my layout :) )) away to one of my blog readers!
To enter to win, please leave a comment (and make sure your email address is filled in somewhere on the form so I can get in touch with you) on this post. Entries will close at midnight on Sunday, February 26, 2011, and I'll randomly select and contact the winner via email on Monday to arrange the details of getting your prize to you.
Shannon Tidwell is guest designing with us over at Bella Blvd. this week, and she came up with a bundle of fun challenges for the design team to play along with. My challenge? To use paper from four or more different collections
Hel-lo, you know I was elated with that one! As someone who used to make her own kits and still enjoys scrapping with kits (that other people have made) on a regular basis, mixing paper lines is so not a problem!
When I mix collections, I try to start with a color scheme to tie everything together. It can also help to start with a theme, an idea of the types of patterns you want to use- basically anything that's a common "vibe" between the papers to help them hang together. In this case I used the colors from my photos as a starting point and pulled together a selection of red, yellow, and blue (well, in this case aqua, but who's counting...) designs, then added in a neutral in the form of gray.
I also picked out a selection of coordinating embellishments including some Baby Blooms a Bella, a package of older Sophisticates chipboard, and a roll of the new designer tape.
And, mmmm, couldn't you just eat one of those cupcakes right now? I baked these sometime last summer just for fun and have had photos of them in my to-be-scrapped box ever since.
Supply List:
Sophisticates: Blue High Five Alphabets, Essentials Peep and McIntosh Chipboard, Simply Simona McIntosh Chipboard
Baby Blooms a Bella: Azzini, Saffron
Midterm: Blurbs
Designer Tape: Yellow Chevron
Sunny Happy Skies: Creamsicle Clouds
Family Dynamix: Quadrants
Sunshine and Happiness: Borders, Happy Clouds
Hello Beautiful: Just Because
Socialite: Tango
According to Lightroom, I took 779 photos during the third week in January. A good 650 of them were of silly putty slowly oozing down over my Darth Vader bobblehead (oh, the things we do to keep ourselves sane at work), but that's a whole other story...
As I mentioned in last week's Project Life post I'm sharing my weekly spreads here a little bit out of order. This one was held out until Scrapbook Circle featured it on their blog last week, and now I'm free to share it here!
I used the phenomenally awesome (and now sold out) Remember This kit from Scrapbook Circle for this week's spread. I love, love, love Rhonna Farrer's new Follow Your Heart collection, and though you can't get the kit from Scrapbook Circle any more, Two Peas in a Bucket has a lot of the items still in stock.
I cut this honeycomb background for my Week 2 layout and decided to leave it in place (instead of covering it with a piece of patterned paper or something) for Week 3, as well. I love that you can see the little cupcake (also part of Week 2) through it.
I had so much to add to this layout that I didn't leave room for a title card in any size slot, so I ended up just adding an Elle's Studio tag next to this picture and stamping it with the dates. Good enough, right?
A couple of interesting candy wrappers from the week's snacks. I love how I can add little bits like this in Project Life!
It turned out to be immensely useful for the 4x6 pockets in the Project Life page protectors. Since the pages were already 6 inches wide, I could just cut two inches off the top or bottom (whichever suited the pattern best) and have a pre-decorated card all ready to go.
This month's kit included several Bitty Bags from Whisker Graphics, and I found that they were the perfect size for slipping into one of the 3x5 pockets. I printed out an email that my Mom sent during the week and tucked it away inside the little bag.
I also had fun with the gold glitter cardstock that came in the kit- we had dinner at an Indian restaurant one night, so I backed the photos and receipt with it. It looks a bit Bollywood, no?
One final kit item that I want to highlight on this layout is the "this week" tag by Elle's Studio (also available at 2Peas). The amount of photos and "stuff" I had left little room for journaling, and I'm really trying to not use too many inserts in this album if I can help it. This little card let me get all my journaling for the week in one compact space.
And if you're curious about the goo and Darth Vader...well, I should probably explain that I work as an engineer, meaning that all of my coworkers are also geeky engineers. The project we're on is a tad bit...demanding...as far as subject matter goes (don't get me wrong, I love it), so we find interesting ways of amusing ourselves when we need a distraction. One of the girls down the hall brought in a package of Thermochromic Glux Putty, which is basically a cooler version of Silly Putty. Anyway, we had fun putting it on top of all kinds of things and watching it slowly ooze down, and one of the guys got the bright idea that we should try it with time-lapse photography and make a video. The next day I took my D3 and MacBook Air in, and 650 frames later this video was born...
The response to the new Friday Favorites format was quite positive, so I'm going to do the same thing over here on Geek Girl, too. It certainly makes things easier for me, and I like the way it looks, too! Gotta love Pinterest, right? :)
This week's Geek Girl features lots of the Valentine's Day stuff that I managed to discover after I posted last week's finds. Better late than never, right? At the very least you can repin some of these for next year.
Something Awful's deliciously snarky take on Valentine's Day resulted in these wonderfully geeky e-cards.
Freelance illustrator James Stowe posted his own Star Wars Valentines (actually, these are from 2010, I believe) featuring more whimsical versions of the GFFA character we all know and love.
Wayne Dorrington has translated the entirety of Return of the Jedi into Iconoscope format. You seriously have the check out all the panels- they're awesome!
My last booth tour post for CHA Winter 2012 just happens to feature a manufacturer with a name falling near the end of the scrapping alphabet- Webster's Pages! That little coincidence was completely unintentional, and while having a name starting with "W" may put Webster's near the bottom of an alphabetical list of manufacturers, they're certainly near the top in terms of style!
Webster's Pages came to CHA Winter 2012 with five diverse new lines to show off. While this show saw many manufacturers producing two or more lines with a common theme but slightly different color schemes (think Echo Park's This and That or Bella Blvd.'s Baby Boy and Baby Girl collections), all four of Webster's Pages new offerings have their own unique theme and color palette.
I somehow missed getting any photos of Everyday Poetry from their booth, but you can see the entire collection here on the Webster's Pages web site.
In Love is Webster's wedding line, and its chic collection of black, white, and cream prints with the slightest hints of a few supporting pastel shades leaves it simply dripping with sophistication.
This heart print is representative of something completely new to the Webster's Pages family this show- Clean and Simple additions to their signature complex and gorgeous paper designs. Each new Webster's collection now also includes an additional six Clean and Simple paper patterns that make it easier for more linear scrappers (like me!!) to use their products. I for one love what I'm seeing here and hope that Webster's Pages continues this addition to the product line.
Webster's is known not only for detailed paper designs, but also for that same attention to detail in their embellishments.
Veteran scrapbooking company Fancy Pants arrived at CHA Winter 2012 with four new collections to offer consumers.
Be You, the first collection on our tour of their CHA booth, is right on trend with its "in the moment," "documenting the everyday" theme. With the massive rise in popularity of documentation systems such as Project Life in the last year, lines like this are perfectly poised to make their way into both traditional scrapbooks and some of the newer formats, as well.
Fancy Pants always nails it with the embellishments- I've long been a fan of their chipboard elements in particular- especially those banner pieces!
If you were watching my blog during the lead up to CHA Winter 2012, then you've already seen all of the Bella Blvd. sneak peeks and product previews that I and all of the other design team members shared. I couldn't go to the show, though, without showing you Bella's booth, as well!
Bella Blvd. introduced four new lines at the show, and two of those full lines and one mini collection work together to form something pretty special. Baby Girl is the first of that group we'll take a look at, and it's everything that you'd expect in a baby line designed by Stephanie! Pinks and purples team up with adorable animals and trendy patterns in this collection.
There's even a pastel pink zebra stripe paper!
The design team worked hard to produce a massive number of projects for the booth, and every available square inch was artfully packed with an assortment of cards, mini albums, layouts, and altered items.
